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Epi-Ready Team Training

Epi-Ready Team Training: Foodborne Illness Response Strategies

What Is Epi-Ready?

Developed in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Epi-Ready is a two-day in-person workshop for environmental and public health professionals with responsibility for investigation of foodborne illness outbreaks. With a team-based approach to training, Epi-Ready focuses on how to efficiently and effectively respond to an outbreak by understanding the roles and responsibilities of the disciplines involved—using the analogy of the 4-legged stool. What happens to a stool (investigation) if one leg is broken or missing?

The Epi-Ready 4-legged stool represents collaboration between the three disciplines involved in a foodborne illness investigation, environmental health specialists/sanitarians, epidemiologists and laboratory staff. The fourth leg of the stool comprises all others who directly or indirectly are involved in outbreak investigations, including public health nurses, health educators, industry, risk communication/public information officers, and others.

"Ongoing conversation and collaboration between the epidemiologist and environmental health professionals has resulted directly from the workshop."

"Our district is restructuring our epi response team to include a dedicated foodborne outbreak "sub-team" and will construct district policies and procedures specific to this team."

"The workshop was excellent and the class helped the sanitarians that attended have a better working relationship with nurses and the different roles each would have in an outbreak of a foodborne disease. As a nurse it helped me have a better understanding how sanitarians felt and their responsibilities and roles."